The Strategy Analytics report Mobile Broadcast TV: Caution Needed as Bubble Grows concluded the current hype surrounding broadcast mobile TV services "remains out of proportion to evidence of consumer interest and willingness to pay." The report said existing cellular networks, once upgraded to HSDPA, can meet the short to medium term demand for mobile TV using 3G multicasting technologies such as MBMS and BMCS.
Senior Analyst Nitesh Patel said, "Although a large proportion of the carrier community is assessing DVB-H, T-DMB, and MediaFlo, their motivation is out of fear and uncertainty rather than opportunity. Network operators should control service delivery over their own infrastructure, since demand can be met adequately by cellular-based multicast technologies such as MBMS, when it becomes available in 2007."
Patel added that the opportunity window for MBMS is limited; as Nokia and Samsung are aggressively pushing digital broadcast technologies.
Strategy Analytics predicted that the mobile TV format battle would be won by DVB-H, instead of Qualcomm's FLO and Korea's DMB technologies.
Strategy Analytics Vice President David Kerr noted that while DMB-based deployments had taken an early lead in Korea where the technology developed, the situation elsewhere could be different.
"As carriers in Europe, North America and the rest of Asia, excluding Japan, begin to launch digital TV, we fully expect DVB-H to win, given its position as a standard, and because of the widespread support it has attained from carriers, the handset vendor community and regulatory bodies," Kerr said. "We also believe that Qualcomm's FLO will struggle to gain traction outside the U.S. market, despite being a superior technology to DVB-H, while in Japan ISDB-T will be the dominant format for terrestrial mobile TV."
Additional information is available at Strategy Analytics' Web site.
